Micah Wright's Joe A.I.M.

Earlier this year, Marvel Comics announced that they were creating a new line of comics called Epic. The goal of Epic was to offer wannabes an oportunity to break into the industry through Marvel. Although they just started to accept submissions from the public, they were actively courting comic creators before the announcement to create some buzz for the new line. One of the comics selected was Mark Millar's Trouble. One that was not, was Micah Wright's Joe A.I.M. First of all, you're probably asking yourself, "What's A.I.M"? If you're a hardcore Marvel junkie, you'll recall that A.I.M. is a group of scientists that dress up in fear inspiring yellow costumes and create killer robots. Their most well known one? MODOK. Joe A.I.M. would have been a comic about those one of those annonymous scientists and the trouble he gets into when he joins A.I.M. by mistake. From Micah Wright's pitch "Joe Stephans is a middle manager at a huge consumer electronics company with a pregnant wife and two beautiful children and a shrewish Mother-in-Law. When Joe is downsized along with his entire division, he flips out and punches his boss in the mouth. Later, in Jail, Joe is mistaken by some criminals for their buddy Joe Stevans ("Geez, that's a reall good face job, Joe! You don't look nuthin like you used to!"). Desperate to get a new job with a health care plan before his wife gives birth to their new baby, Joe eagerly grabs the lifeline thrown to him by his new friends... a line which leads to a new job with what Joe believes is an Engineering company: Advanced Idea Mechanics. Too late, Joe realizes that he has joined the semi-famous international terrorist group dedicated to Anarchy and Terror and the destruction of all Government!" Sounds pretty interesting, eh? It's too bad that it was never picked up. Wright has this to say about Marvel's failure to pick it up" "Yeah, I can totally see why they couldn't be bothered to read this. How Weak this would be! I mean, I only had Garth Ennis in stitches at a bar in NYC telling him pieces of the story (like my favorite section where Joe tries to get his wife to breastfeed the new MODOK baby which has decided that Joe is its Father and won't let anyone else near it without blasting them dead with Mental Rays." Too bad. Any comic featuring a breast-fed MODOK is ace in my books.